Below are Wirral Council’s grounds of appeal. On the first page it lists Wirral Metropolitan Borough Council as the Claimant, when they are in fact the Appellant.
Wirral Council asks for bids on £275,000 contract for broadcasting its public meetings
Wirral Council asks for bids on £275,000 contract for broadcasting its public meetings
Cllr Phil Davies speaking about Labour’s Budget (Budget Council, 6th March 2017)
At Wirral Council’s Budget meeting in March 2017, included in Labour‘s budget was £225,000 for a webcasting/audio/electronic voting replacement described as “webcasting for committee meetings”.
At the time, the Liberal Democrats opposed this. They stated in their Budget that they believed “that this item should be withdrawn until the costs have been fully investigated and the benefits have been fully assessed and justified.”
In August Wirral Council published two notices in the Official Journal of the European Union. The first notice was published on 23rd August 2017, followed by a change to accept variants. By this point the price had gone up to £275,000 (excluding VAT).
Wirral Council came up with a webcasting Invitation To Tender which asks for the submission of tenders by 12 noon on the 20th September 2017.
11.9.17 ED: Since this article was published, Wirral Council have extended the date for the submission of tenders to noon on the 4th October 2017.
25.9.17 ED: Since this article was published, Wirral Council have extended the date again for the submission of tenders to noon on the 3rd November 2017.
In Wirral Council’s invitation to tender it states, “it must also be fully compatible with the Mod Gov case management solution: http://www.moderngov.co.uk/.
The contract also requests an electronic voting system for public meetings of all Wirral Council councillors in the Council Chamber. In response to a question, Wirral Council stated that the current system of counting votes by which councillors had their hands up was “unreliable”.
If Wirral Council accepts one of the bids, the contract is expected to start on April 1st 2018 and run for three years.
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I received a 2 page letter yesterday (4th September 2017) sent by Second Class post dated 1st September 2017 from ICO (the regulator).
In summary the letter states that the Information Commissioner’s solicitors are now dealing with the matter as Wirral Metropolitan Borough Council have appealed decision notice FER0672223 to the First-tier Tribunal (Information Rights).
As Wirral Council are the Appellant, the Information Commissioner will be First Respondent.
ICO’s letter also states that due to this the Commissioner won’t be keeping me informed about further developments on the appeal.
Although I’m the person who made the original information request, as I’m not appealing the decision notice, I’m not at the point of writing this blog post a party to the matter.
From past experience it could take ~7 months before a decision is reached.
This is a new situation I find myself in as it’s the first time a public authority has appealed to the First-tier Tribunal a decision notice relating to an information request I’ve made!
A copy of ICO’s two page letter is below, the First-tier Tribunal case reference number is EA/2017/0191.
